Today, December 20, marks the centenary of the birth of Joseph Payne Brennan. Brennan only wrote one novel, which was published by a small press. Most of his output was in the form of short fiction and poetry. Several volumes of both have been published, and are readily available on the secondary market. They ain’t gonna be cheap.
For example, The Shapes of Midnight, a paperback published by Berkley in 1980 shows eighteen copies available under a search on ABE. They cheapest is $27.63. The prices rise from there to a high of $176.04. That is not a typo. Someone is asking one hundred seventy-six dollars and four cents for a paperback. I don’t remember how much I paid for my copy, but it wasn’t anywhere near $27, let alone $176.
Brennan was a good writer. He was one of the last writers to write for the original incarnation of Weird Tales. I’ve liked everything I’ve read by him, which, granted, isn’t much. But that’s mainly because his work hasn’t been collected in a readily accessible form. Most of his books were published in limited print runs by small presses. It would probably be easier and cheaper to track down his stories in their original publications than to buy some of his books.
I would hope that Wildside or Centipede Press would do a large retrospective. While Centipede would do Brennan Justice by putting his work inside some very nice hard covers, the book would probably be out of nearly everyone’s reach due to the price. Not that I wouldn’t try to scrape the cash together. On the other hand, a couple of Megapacks of his work from Wildside would be great. There aren’t any electronic versions of Brennan’s work. Maybe one of these publishers will put something together soon. I would love to read some of Brennan’s poetry.
Clark Ashton Smith (1893-1961) was born on this date, January 13. Along with Robert E. Howard and H. P. Lovecraft, Smith was considered one of the Big Three of Weird Tales. Smith lived the longest of these three gentlemen, but his writing career wasn’t much longer. He wrote during the 1920s and 30s but stopped writing around 1937. Smith was a poet as well as a short story writer, and it shows in his lush, baroque prose. In fact, one of the more common criticisms of Smith is that reading him requires too much work and too large of a vocabulary. His stories were often set in imaginary worlds such as Hyperborea, Poseidonis, and Zothique. They are well worth seeking out. Fortunately they are available in inexpensive electronic editions.
